It will be some time before the first national newspaper goes up in cyberspace

Spectator, The, Aug 28, 1999 by Glover, Stephen

On Sunday the Sunday Times carried some very exciting news: Britain was to have its first totally on-line daily national newspaper. Existing national newspapers have their own internet versions - so does The Spectator - but what was planned was an all-cyberspace financial publication. According to the report, two high-flying Financial Times journalists, Robert Peston and William Lewis, were planning to leave the FT with an unspecified number of colleagues to start their own show.

Monday brought disappointing news. The editor of the Financial Times, Richard Lambert, was quoted as saying: `Peston and Lewis are not leaving. The idea of a mass walkout is complete nonsense.' So that was that then. Actually, I found the whole thing a bit incredible. People don't plan to start a new national newspaper and then suddenly give up because a story about their activities appears in the press. I don't know Mr Lewis, but I have come across Mr Peston, and his reported behaviour sounded implausibly wimpish.

In fact, the Sunday Times article was rather ahead of itself - or rather behind. Messrs Peston and Lewis had indeed planned a cyberspace national newspaper. Their feeling was, and possibly still is, that Britain is lagging behind America. In that country there are several cyberspace-only daily publications including Slate, owned by Microsoft, and Salon (both can be accessed free at www.slate.com and www.salon.com). There is also a Murdoch-backed daily financial internet business newspaper called TheStreet.com, which costs $9.95 per month or $99.95 per year.

This publication seems to have served as something of a model, though the planned newspaper would not be so exclusively targeted at investors, and would carry more high-quality reporting and commentary. Like TheStreet.com, it would be updated throughout the day. Venture capitalists were contacted during the spring - Peston and Lewis were looking for about L30 million start-up capital - and the response seems to have been generally quite favourable. The argument was that, in the same way that a technological shift had produced the Independent in the mid-1980s, so developments on the internet offered new opportunities that no one in this country had yet seized. Then came the crash of internet stock in America.

Whether their paper would have got off the ground if this bubble had not been pricked is difficult to say. But once venture capitalists in the City saw what was happening in America they were understandably alarmed. They seriously doubted whether there would be enough advertising revenue to support the new venture. And so Messrs Peston and Lewis were forced to put their newspaper on ice. While the Sunday Times was announcing the imminent appearance of a new on-line publication, the idea was, if not dead, certainly sleeping.

This is all rather disappointing. I haven't seen their revenue projections, nor do I have any idea of their costs, but their plan has the smack of success. I am about as far as is possible from being an internet boffin, but it seems to me most unlikely that we will have a totally on-line general daily national newspaper in the foreseeable future. As I say, there is Slate and Salon in America, which are really magazines rather than newspapers, but both lose money and have hardly set the world alight. It is difficult to see how Britain, with its much smaller population, could support such on-line publications, the more so given that, unlike America, we already have a developed national press.

But there might well be a market for an on-line financial newspaper. Political news can generally wait until the following morning's breakfast table; financial news often can't. I can imagine an on-line publication with expert commentary and analysis updated throughout the day as shares crashed and soared, companies announced results, and central banks raised or lowered interest rates. The ultimate point of such a publication would be to serve investors who would otherwise have to wait for the next day's Financial Times or Wall Street Journal. Its value to them would be speed. You would get better information and analysis more quickly than is at present available, and the paper would offer you an instant opportunity to buy, sell or invest. Just click here.

For all their entrepreneurial flair, Mr Peston and Mr Lewis appear to have got their timing a little awry. That does not mean that someone else will not revive their idea, or that they themselves may not get a second wind. Perhaps the Financial Times will put up the money. (It should certainly be proud of its two journalists.) Its own internet business, FT.com, is said by some experts to be rather uninspired. Meanwhile TheStreet.com is threatening to move into the paper's own patch by launching a European service. I have a feeling that there may be an opportunity here, though I can't say who will seize it.

It is amusing to see how Conservative newspapers are embracing the new wonder woman Ann Widdecombe, hoping against hope that this strange creature may singlehandedly restore Tory England. During William Hague's absence in America Ms Widdecombe has been particularly evident, bashing poor Jack Straw one minute and heaping abuse on the Blairs the next. All good fun, I suppose, and perhaps I am unusual in not finding her wonderfully charismatic and inspirational. I would say it was her voice that let her down - it has the same effect on me as chalk drawn across a blackboard - but it is practically a law of modern politics that Tory leaders should speak differently from the rest of us. Think of Heath, Thatcher and Major, and ask yourself how many people you have met who talk like that. Since it is another law of modern British politics that prime ministers cannot be bald (Sir Alec Douglas-Home was the last baldie), I suppose it is inevitable that Mr Hague will in due course be replaced by Ann Widdecombe.